After obtaining my camera a little over a year ago now, I've had timelapses in my head. I had long ago set cameras to capture video and then sped that up, but the effect created more of a sense of chaos rather than time passing, which I don't think is quite as pleasing (visually at least.) Now back to the more recent years. Due to a clerical error, I ended up spending a night in a hotel room, on an upper floor, with not much more than the aforementioned new camera. My options were, use a telephoto lens to capture shots, or try to set up a timelapse. Since the former might incite allegations of a voyeuristic nature, I opted for the timelapse. I set the camera up, looking down upon the city block, and construction site below, pulled an armchair across the room, and positioned myself at an angle pointed halfway between the TV and the window (What was I gonna do, NOT watch TV?) I grabbed the remote trigger, and began to count, every 15 seconds pressing the button, allowing the trigger's beam to bounce off the window back at the camera and taking a picture. This lasted fine for a while, until 10:30 actually, when the intervals started to slip, and I began to fall asleep. 15 seconds turned to 30, which turned to 45, which turned to me waking up at about 11:40, with no idea of when the last picture was taken. Figuring that was acceptable effort for a first try I called it a night. To my surprise when I finally got back to my computer, the footage didn't look awful. The most noticeable issue being the way the moon stutters across the sky like lunar Morse code. I like the planes though, even if they do move in a decidedly weird, and eerily consistent pattern.

Sometime shortly after I came across Alpine Labs' (Then called Vivo Labs) Michron, which is a small device that will trigger most DSLRs, and is programmable by most smartphones. After saving up to buy a smartphone with an Android OS (They did not make an app for Windows at the time), I finally bought one. My first attempt was admittedly too grand. The Michron allows for small ramps in both iteration and exposure, how hard could it be to predict the exposure? Turns out hard. The result was underexposure for about an hour after sunset, and then complete darkness until the end. But I had been through the process once now, so maybe next time, just aim for something simpler, either just ramp the iterations, or go for vanilla.

Come the night of that Perseids Meteor Shower, I was dogsitting at a friend's house, the location of which was just far enough out, that there was noticeably less light pollution. So I threw my fisheye lens on, and set out to try to capture some meteors. A few hours later I was walking the dog, passing the camera I heard the shutter clicking away diligently, so all seemed well. But upon coming back I heard the sprinklers near the entrance of the apartment complex come on. I'd forgotten those were a thing, so I weighed my chances, and decided I would move the camera to the other side of the street. This prevented it from getting soaked, but failed to continue cleanly capturing footage. The jump in the footage was in no way excusable, and the there were not many images in the post move sequence, as the battery died shortly thereafter.

I did however managed to snag a shot of this dude shooting across the sky though, so the night wasn't a total loss.

The next day I charged the battery, attached the battery pack, and found a spot just out of reach of the sprinklers. Just in case I wrapped the body of the camera in a trash bag, and hoped for the best. This time I got lucky. Not only did everything function properly, and for a decent amount of time, but it was the night a large bunch of clouds rolled in, and it happened right before sunrise. I didn't set an exposure ramp, so this time everything went white, but combined with the clouds/fog, I actually think it looks pretty dang cool.

In more recent happening, thanks to Thomas, I am currently working in-office at WebTuner on whatever needs to get done. During October there was a night devoted to pumpkin carving, which sounded like it might have visual promise, so I propped up the camera and let it go once again. I was having issues re-programming the Michron. I think it was stuck at a 10 second interval, which resulted in that chaotic video look (Someone mentioned it made them a bit dizzy), so I need to get in and fix those settings for next time.

For one of my most recent outdoor attempts, I set up on the side of the street and ran the camera through the night. Despite the cool shapes and patterns the headlights made, there weren't many cars, and the video itself was pretty boring. I did however snag several pictures of a local bunny, walking around! I decided to take a stab at a jump cut-ey style of editing, which devolved into my adding as many noises, lights and cuts as I could to make myself laugh.

I'll keep trying, and see what else I can come up with. I would say so far my takeaways can be simplified into two points.A) The aesthetic of a timelapse, does not make the subject more interesting.​B) Everything is funny at 4AM.

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Campion J Kirkham

A production artist, trying to keep myself on my toes. So, I've created this blog with the intent of updating it at least once a week.